Daily Trip Report - October 25, 2003

Prof. Perritt -
I had an interesting conversation last night with the Washington bureau chief of the San Antonio newspaper, who is doing a story on nationbuilding. I told him about the lignite and tourism projects and promised to send him our results.

Besim introduced me last evening to the Albanian ambassador to Kosovo, who promised to arrange a meeting with the Minister of Finance of Albania on next Saturday when Besim and I are to go to Tirana. We will discuss highways, railroads, and electric transmission lines.

Besim is supposed to get me together today with the Prime Minister to arrange a longer meeting to discuss legal support for the PM's office.

I hope to go up to the lignite mines on Wednesday.

I met with Bill Klawonn, legal adviser to the Prime Minister. We discussed legal issues arising in conjunction with privatization. He received our FOIA comments in July and sent them on to the team making final review of the legislation.

At the reception for Besim Beqaj, after he successfully defended his PhD thesis, I had a good conversation with Dale Pfeiffer, head of USAID here. People contemplate giving a 7-10 year "concession" to a private investor who would build a new generating plant and mine lignite to fuel it, allowing the export of electricity to the region. The existing distribution grid, with rehabilitation, supplemented by a new 400 KVA line to Albania would be sufficient to handly the electricity to a region projected to be significantly short of electricity.

Later, I met with Professor Kuci, who reports that the University is enthusiastic about the symposium on final status, and should be in a position to fund travel expenses for its participants. I will meet with the Dean and Prof. Murati and Prof. Kuci on Monday to sign an MOU regarding the symposium.

Prof Kuci will take a draft MOU to SEEU on Tuesday so we can get a framework in place to permit SEEU students to visit Chicago-Kent for a semester or a year.

In the evening, I met with Andy Gridinsky, who helped get the American University in Kosovo set up.

This morning, I am to meet with Dr. Bukoshi, who was in charge of the "3-percent" fund during the parallel system in the 1990s, and who helped fund AUK more recently.

This afternoon, Alban and Fahri are to take me to Fahri's village.

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